FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION
Search the corpus.
Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
2,274 matching pages
Page 83 of 1141944 · PDF PAGE 163
…on, are often in this class; but when this is the case, there is still no stability. They wander from one cult or one vice to another, always brilliantly supporting with the fa‐ naticism of a fixed conviction what is actually no more than the whim of the moment. It is easy to be deceived by such people; for the manifestation itself has enormous po‐ tency: it is as if an imbecile offered one the dialogues of Plato. They may in this way acquire a great reputation both for depth and breadth of mind.
1954 · PDF PAGE 229
…ges thus begotten, of hopes or memories stirred up, or merely for the sound of the word itself. (I have gone a month's journey out of my way to visit a town, just because I liked the sound of the name!) Then there are devices: style-rhythm, cadence, rime, ornamentation of a thousand kinds. I think one may take it that the good writer makes use of such artifice to make his meaning clear; the bad writer to obscure it, or to conceal the fact that he has none. I had a marvellous lesson myself some years earlier. I had cut down a certain ritual of i…
1954 · PDF PAGE 313
… is that of the sum of the first 49 numbers, as is proper to Venus. We may then expect the head or headdress of the spirit to be in some way characteristic of the Sign of Pisces. The general form of the body will be indicated by the Daleth, the letter of Venus, and the lower part (or perhaps the quality) will be determined by the watery Mem-the termination Aleph Lamed is usually taken to indicate appropriate symbols. For instance, the Aleph might show a golden aura, and the Lamed a pair of balances. Some further detail might be indicated by tak…
1954 · PDF PAGE 446
THE GOD-LETTERS 413 sketchy account: always, when one touches the subject, one "goes all woolly." One lacks not only completeness, but precision. Then there is the "over-lapping" nuisance, and the fact that the natures and the names of the Gods change slowly as time goes by. The confusion! The contradictions! I could wish to be the proverbial bargee. Oh! I could go on making excuses for another hour! It can't be helped; and I feel that I shall have rendered you quite a bit of service by calling your attention to the existence of the subject, by…
1922 · PDF PAGE 23
…provoked into the fight, that he mustn't hurt him because they were such old friends! The behaviour of a crowd in affairs of this kind always seems to me very singular. Every one, or nearly every one, seems to start to interfere; and nobody actually does so. But this matter threatened to prove more serious. The old man had really lost his temper. It was odds that he would choke the life out of the cur under his knee. I had just enough presence of mind to make way for the head waiter, a jolly, burly Frenchman, who came pushing into the circle. I…
1929 · PDF PAGE 150
Think of the fate of Hannibal and of Napoleon. Always the same story — too much victory!" Brother Onofrio bounded again in his amazement. "Peace! Luxury!" he cried. "Haven't we got the Great Experiment?" "Have we?" sighed Cyril, languidly. "Isn't the crisis in a month?" "There are twelve months in a year." Brother Onofrio rose in indignation. He hated to be played with in this manner; he could see no point in the jest, if it were one; or excuse for the rudeness, in the alternative. "Sit down, sit down!" said Cyril dreamily. "You say yourself th…
1954 · PDF PAGE 460
…I didn't invent the system; I must suppose that those who did knew what they were about. To me it is (a) convenient in various practical ways, (b) a machine for carrying out the orders of the Secret Chiefs of A:. A:. (c) by virtue of the Secret a magical weapon of incalculable power. You are not "stuck ." You can use your Astral Body well enough: too well, in one way. But I think you need a few more journeys with me: you ought to get on to the stage where the vision results from a definite invocation. 1. How do you know They are "invisible"? I …
1954 · PDF PAGE 499
…tain does not look the same from Zermatt as it does from Domodossola, or even as seen by a French-Swiss and a German-Swiss.) In the same way read the Life of Napoleon written by one of his marshals, by Michelet (a rabid Republican), by Lord Roseberry, by a patriotic Russian, and by a German poet and philosopher: one can hardly believe that the subject of any two of these biographies is the same man. But upon certain points the identity is bound to transpire; even when we read of his crushing and classic defeat at Waterloo by the Belgians, the m…
1909 · PDF PAGE 374
…age being of an equal or superior volume, and as I know some- thing about pigeons, as before mentioned, I managed that in a very clever ‘way. I say clever because it is a very simple scheme in its cleverness, and nobody would say it if not I, but nevertheless it had to be found—like the egg of the late C.C. I bought a fine hen pigeon, and kept it with the Man-Cover’s messenger, so that they could rub acquaintance. WhenI noticed the first symptoms of love I blessed the new pair and let them go. The new wife—as I thought she would—followed her hu…
1909 · PDF PAGE 374
…age being of an equal or superior volume, and as I know some- thing about pigeons, as before mentioned, I managed that in a very clever ‘way. I say clever because it is a very simple scheme in its cleverness, and nobody would say it if not I, but nevertheless it had to be found—like the egg of the late C.C. I bought a fine hen pigeon, and kept it with the Man-Cover’s messenger, so that they could rub acquaintance. WhenI noticed the first symptoms of love I blessed the new pair and let them go. The new wife—as I thought she would—followed her hu…
1922 · PDF PAGE 92
78 The Diary of a Drug Fiend Happiness lies within one’s self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine. But don’t you go and forget what I hope you won't mind my calling ordinary prudence. Use a little - common sense, use precaution, exercise good judgment. However hungry you may happen to be, you don’t want to eat a dozen oxen en brochette. Natura non facit saltum. It’s only a question of applying knowledge in a reasonable manner. We had found out how to work the machine, and there was no reason in the world why we shouldn’t fly from here to Kala…
1922 · PDF PAGE 179
…to be interested to keep her in good humour. Everything might depend on that. . But it was awful to have to let her kiss me when I went away. I wonder if I should get like that if I went on with dope. What absolute nonsense! For all I know, it may have prevented her going faster still. She must have had a beastly rotten life. The way she clawed at that five quid was the clue to her troubles; that and her ignorance of everything but the nastiest kind of vice and the meanest kind of crime.
1922 · PDF PAGE 217
…esperately badly. The real nature of the transaction was as plain as a prison plum-pudding. But I suppose it does amuse one in a sort of way to ape various affected attitudes. He knew that my modesty and confusion and blushes were put on like so much paint on the cheeks of a Piccadilly street- walker. It didn’t even hurt his vanity to know that I thought him an offensive old ogre. He had the thing I wanted, I had the thing he wanted, and he didn’t care if I drugged myself to death to-morrow, provided I had paid his price to-day. The callous cyn…
1922 · PDF PAGE 335
…rything wrong, and expected the world to fall down and worship them for being wastrels. And at every turn they found the Big Lion in the way, to bring them back to reality. But the truth was too bitter medicine for them. If they had accepted the facts, they could have altered the facts; and learnt to do something worth while. But they preferred to cherish delusions of persecution. They persuaded themselves that they were being crucified when they were only having their faces washed. But the paint of self-esteem had been put on too thick ; so aw…
1922 · PDF PAGE 342
…a new chum.” But her finger pointed sternly to column two. It was headed, “ Reason for taking the dose.” Well, Dionysus had shown me the way out of that, so I turned impudently around and said :— “Enough of Because, be he damned for a dog!” The effect was electric. We both broke into a duet of low musical laughter that seemed to me in exquisite harmony with the beauty of the April morning. “ The devil can quote scripture,” she retorted, “ that business about Because refers to something entirely different. The point about this (she was very seri…
1929 · PDF PAGE 26
…ns. It is the Art of applying that under¬ standing in action. (Illustration: A golf club is intended to move a spécial bail in a spécial way in spécial circumstances. A Niblick should rarely be used on the tee, or a Brassie under the bank of a bunker. But also, the use of any club demands skill and expérience.) (24) Every man has an indefeasible right to be what he is. (Illustration: To insist that any one else shall comply with one’s own standards is to outrage, not only him, but oneself, since both parties are equally born of necessity.) (25)…
1954 · PDF PAGE 121
…ree great Schools of Magick. It will tend to appease the eternal conflict by understanding that each type of thought shall go on its own way, develop its own proper qualities without seeking to interfere with other formulae, however (superficially) opposed to its own. What is true for every School is equally true for every individual. Success in life, on the basis of the Law of Thelema, implies severe self-discipline. Each being must progress, as biology teaches, by strict adaptation to the conditions of the organism. If, as the Black School co…
1954 · PDF PAGE 224
…his. Then come wolves, hyc:enas, large dogs of the hunting type; occasionally leopards. Tales of cats and serpents are usually the other way round; it is the human (nearly always female) that assumes these shapes by witchcraft . But in ancient Egypt they literally doted on this sort of thing. The papyri are full of formulas for operating such transmutations. But I think that this was mostly to afford some relaxation for the spirit of the dead man; he nipped out of his sarcophagus, and painted the town all the colours of the rainbow in one anima…
1954 · PDF PAGE 522
LIFE A GAMBLE 489 So off we go. Risks, we have agreed, are always unavoidable; but we can calculate them. The best and wisest man I ever knew, the late Oscar Eckenstein , was once offered a job which gave him a fifty percent chance of survival. He calmly sat down, worked out his "expectation of life," his "expectation of income," and the Lord alone knows what other factors. It came out that the pay offered was a thousand pounds or so less than he might expect normally, so he turned down the offer. Not a trace of sentiment of any kind! Now let u…
1922 · PDF PAGE 181
…ight. Nothing else has any effect. Everything that happens makes me want a sniff; and every sniff makes something happen. One can’t get away from the cage, but the complexity makes me... there, I can’t think what I started to say. My mind stops suddenly. It’s like dropping a vanity bag. You stop to pick it up and the things are all over the place and it always seems as if something were missing. One can never remember what it is, but the feeling of annoyance is acute. It’s mixed up with a vague fear. I’ve often forgotten things before—every one…